For the most part, Green and Shapiro come over like a couple working their troubles in group therapy through gritted teeth. [Feb 2013, p.73]

Too much here feels diaphanous and directionless. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

There are worth while curiosities here: his "Bad Blood" is utterly tuneless, but "Blank Space" is appealingly tremulous. [Dec 2015, p.67]

The result is a disjointed, jarring mix of washy atmospherics, bleary electronics and half-baked songs. [Sep 2017, p.23]

“Sex Magik” and “If We Get Caught” offer unashamedly lusty visions punctuated by agreeable glimpses of pop glitter. Otherwise, though, waspish, charismatically delivered lyrics are let down by workaday instrumental backing. [Jun 2022, p.25]

Despite this gaggle of helpers, If I Kill This is a surprisingly muted affair. [May 2015, p.75]

Batmanglij rarely gets out of first gear, fussing through vanilla ballads like "Hardy" and "Forgive Is To Know". [Jun 2026, p.34]

The Musicianship is on point, the recoding crystal clear. But as a listener, it feels difficult to penetrate the album's inky darkness, and you suspect they like it that way. [Feb 2015, p.77]

It's all executed with efficient power, yet the sum is somehow less than its parts. [Jul 2016, p.74]

There's no denying the monstrous likes of "AO" and "Fast Seconds" are well constructed, but they're little more than assemblages of over-familiar parts. [Nov 2013, p.78]

For all its excursions into dancehall and fado, it's no advance on 2014's Rebel Heart: there's a sense of chasing trends. [Aug 2019, p.32]

An overload of genre hopping and exotic finery swamps whatever attracted all the heavyweight talent to her in the first place. [Aug 2003, p.108]

Isn't quite the show-them-who's-boss return that JSBX should have come up with. [May 2002, p.110]

Pleasant but faintly drippy folk-pop. [Dec 2012, p.65]

Plenty of mouth, then, but lacking in trousers. [Jun 2014, p.69]

Song structures are over-egged, resulting in blunted hooks and lost momentum. [Dec 2019, p.25]

All in all, A Thousand Miles is a diverting curio, but no substitute for the original. [Apr 2015, p.78]

A glossy but incoherent neo-rave pastiche. [Sep 2012, p.87]

The Brooklyn five-piece's second record resembles an ordinary collection of pebbles--unlike their early sea-washed gems. [Mar 2016, p.73]

The first four tracks are surprisingly limp-leaved, pastel-shaded electro-synth in a decidedly retro vein. From then on, it gets better. [Dec 2012, p.71]

A reliance on rabbity non-sequiters, plus a tendency to change genres every 11 seconds, makes the point of it all rather hard to grasp. [Mar 2016, p.77]

There remains the faintest hint of gothic romance, a kind of Dead Can Dance Class. But you are likely to slip off trying to locate any kind of edge. [Apr 2015, p.83]

The straightforward rap tracks merely show up his generically braggadocio lyricism and deflated hook, using charmless trap cliche and bringing out the leaden, smoke-headed worst in the likes of Action Bronson, Mac Miller and Ab-Soul. [Jun 2014, p.78]

The DIY production can smother their delicate melodicism, and those parping horns can sound distinctly cheap and shrill. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Guests Toy do their best to push things forward, but their propulsive ways merely emphasise Zeffira's absent voice. [Jan 2013, p.83]

Her country warble may be a little too trad. honey for eclectic tastes. [May 2003, p.91]

There's a certain wonky charm to the title track, but elsewhere Creation is too clean and clearly aimed at a Radio 2 demographic to be much more than background noise. [Jul 2014, p.78]

There are more fine moments--"powder Man" is softly somnambulant, and the cinematic soundscape of "Kubrick" is an intoxicating affair--but self-editing is notably absent. [Apr 2019, p.39]